… today. And it all went wrong as early as breakfast time. I was thinking to myself that my breakfast coffee tasted pretty awful, and closer inspection revealed that I was in fact drinking merely hot water in a coffee-flavoured mug. That depressed me for a start.
And then going downstairs I fell through the trap that I had made yesterday, and only quick thinking by grabbing the beam as I fell through it prevented me from plummetting down to the concrete floor about 3 metres below.
I’ve done myself quite a mischief, but while I was hanging there from the beam working out the best way to haul myself back up, I came to the conclusion that maybe the hatch was not such a good idea after all.
I mean, it is an excellent idea but it won’t work here, because there’s not sufficient support around the edges to carry the weight of whatever is going to be walking across it, as I had just demonstrated. Consequently, once I had ccrawled back up onto terra firma, I ripped out the hatch and the surround and spen the rest of the morning refitting both layers of the floor. I’d nearly finished by lunchtime but I carried on regardless until it was finished.
I know that I said that I was going to vacuum out the bathroom and put the first coat of varnigh on the floor, but as you might expect after I’ve talked about such things, we were having a slight snowstorm and there was a hanging cloud here for most of the morning. That put the kybosh on the vacuuming.
After lunch I fetched a pile of wood into the house for the fire, but all of a sudden, the sun put in a bried appearance. Out came the vacuum cleaner and I cleaned out the bathrrom and then did the first coat of varnish.
As for the vacuum cleaner, there will be some who would complain about the lack of efficiency, but these people would have seen the price tag (€29:99 reduced to €14:99) and not seen the power of the machine – 600 watts instead of the more usual 1500 watts. I knew exactly what I was buying and I knew exactly how it was going to work, and so I was not disappointed at all. It did exactly what it said it would and did it quite efficiently too, and I was delighted.
I spent the rest of the working day cutting a board that I need for the head of the stairs – I’d forgotten about that. I’ll fit that next time I’m working here as I’m out all day tomorrow.
I’ve also fitted the handrail for the stairs. Two huge screwed eyes and a length of 14mm hemp rope, and that’s made quite an effective handrail.
It’s not 100% my own idea though. I knew that I had seen something like this before, and the other night, watching the absolutely outstanding Green For Danger
I was working long after 18:00 but I had a phone call that interrupted me for 10 minutes. Terry had the census people round there and they didn’t speak English, so I was required to interpret.
So tomorrow, I won’t be here as I have things to do. But I’m going to put the second coat of varnish on the bathroom floor before I go, and if I remember, I’ll put the third coat on when I come back and that’s the flooring all done down there.
